


My love, you pull my heartstrings

by Silversouledcat



Series: What I know could fill a lake (what i've forgotten could fill oceans) [1]
Category: Leverage, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon Compliant, Gen, Memory Loss, Minor Angst, Very Minor, for leverage anyway, jaskier and sophie: untitled geese, they're cousins now, witcher is whatever i like and decide to use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29029260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silversouledcat/pseuds/Silversouledcat
Summary: "The girl who would one day be Sophie Deveraux was ten when she first met her cousin Julian."The cousin's relationship over the years, how a clever Raven found her path to becoming Sophie, and how Julian tries to find what he's missing.
Series: What I know could fill a lake (what i've forgotten could fill oceans) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154768
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	My love, you pull my heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> So uhhhh I know I have another fic I haven't updated in. months. It's sitting open on my laptop, I swear! It'll get finished!! ...eventually.  
> But this just, ate my brain, and I needed to share it. HUGE thanks to June, who beta'd this for me so it's not a total mess, and actually makes sense at times.
> 
> Also yes, it is somehow Geralt's fault. It always is.

Sophie Deveraux was ten years old when she met her cousin Julian.

Of course, she wasn’t Sophie then. Sophie Deveraux would not exist for over a decade, and it would be years after that before she found a family and a home with the team known as Leverage, but at that moment, the girl who was not Sophie was  _ bored _ .

The party she had been forced to attend was loud and painfully Polite, all the younger kids were too little to play with, and the older kids treated her like a  _ baby.  _ She pouted, idly poking at the table in front of her, before looking up as a man she vaguely recognized pushed a boy into the chair next to her and said, “Now Julian, your mother and I will come to get you when it’s time to leave. Until then,  _ behave yourself _ , and stay here.”

She managed to wait until after the man wandered off to say offendedly, “He was  _ rude. _ ”    
  
The boy - Julian - laughed at that, and said “He’s  _ always _ like that though!”

Her response of “Then he is  _ always _ rude,” said with all the pomposity a ten year old could muster, only made him giggle more. Seizing the opportunity to ask another question, she quickly said, “Why do you have a wolf with you?”   
  
Wide blue eyes blinked up at her before looking down at the large stuffed white wolf in his arms, the plush’s golden eyes and serious expression facing outwards. “His name is Ger. He fights monsters like Aunt Nora, so I brought him to protect me”

  
She nodded. Aunt Nora certainly counted as a monster to  _ her _ , and it made sense to bring something that fought monsters to protect you from them.

A smile flashed across Julian’s face, full of mischief, as he said “D’you wanna find something  _ fun _ to do?”   
  
The girl who would someday be Sophie Deveraux smiled back and said, “What did you have in mind?”

  
  
  


The chaos they caused had been  _ wonderful _ , made all the sweeter by the fact that they had made it back to their chairs before anyone had thought to look for the perpetrators. After that, the cousins were fast friends - her parents glad she had finally found someone to talk to, and Julian’s parents simply glad to have someone to leave him with when they didn’t want to deal with him for a day or two. It was during one of these sleepovers that he gifted her with the nickname of Raven, after a day spent imitating accents from the television where she was able to almost perfectly mimic any accent she heard.   
  
“Because you have dark hair and you’re smart and you can sound like  _ anyone _ ,” Julian insisted, when she asked. 

She was the one who insisted he come to her music lessons when she saw him watching hungrily, and bullied her parents into getting a better tutor when Julian quickly outstripped her. In return, Julian showed her how to wrap a room around her finger, and how to gauge the mood of a crowd. Whenever she asked how he knew, Julian could only offer a sheepish smile and say, “I just  _ do, _ you know?”

And it was Julian who was the one to unknowingly show her the path that would lead to her becoming Sophie Deveraux. They had been holed up in his bedroom, despite the disapproving looks of his parents - it didn’t matter that she was sixteen and he was fourteen, they were  _ cousins, _ what on earth did the dimwits think they were going to do!?

(She did not like Julian’s parents, for good reason.)   
  
The teenager who was not Sophie rolled over from where she had laid down on his bed - Julian would call it  _ flopped _ , but since ladies did not  _ flop _ , he was clearly mistaken. “Julian, have you heard a word I’ve said?”   
  


“Of course, my dear Raven! You want to go to this party, but you also  _ don’t _ want to go to this party,” he said, twirling the pencil he had been using to scribble down ideas. “If it would be such a hassle to go, then simply stay home! It’s not as if you can’t find plenty of interesting things to do for a night.”   
  
“Uugghh, but I  _ do _ want to go, that’s the  _ problem _ . I just don’t want to have to deal with people simpering at me, and if I’m not on my  _ best behavior, _ it’ll get back to Father and I will be in a  _ world _ of trouble. I want to have some  _ fun _ for once!”

Julian quirked an eyebrow and grinned at her, raising his pencil like a baton. “Then, my dearest cousin, there is a very simple solution to your dilemma! Simply go as someone else, and any misbehavior on your end will never get back to your father, at least not under  _ your _ name.”

She blinked and rolled to a sitting position, careful to avoid hitting Ger in his place of pride at the head of the bed. The stuffed wolf was beginning to look a bit tattered, but she had seen Julian sit and carefully stitch up small tears and she knew that he valued the toy almost more than any of his instruments. She watched him as he waggled his eyebrows smugly at her from his position slouching sideways in a chair, before asking, “So I would, what, pretend to be some other girl?”

Julian shrugged. “Or make up someone entirely new. You want to be an actor - consider this your first role. Test your wings, my darling Raven, out of our charming family’s collective eye. Have some fun! We’re  _ young _ , we’re  _ supposed  _ to make bad decisions!”

Slowly, the teenager who was not yet Sophie smiled. “And how do we go about doing this, then?”

Julian smiled back and leaned in playfully. “Well, to start with….”

  
  


The party went  _ beautifully _ . No one had caught on to her false identity, and she rode that thrill of dancing on the edge of discovery for  _ days  _ afterward. After that, she created more elaborate personas, spun whole  _ people _ out of cloth and a name and breathed life into them for an evening, a day, a week. Julian helped, pointing out the things that would make people wonder or make them feel secure. And with each new name, each life spun into being, they became more solid, more rooted in reality, until at eighteen years old, she had a half dozen different ID’s on her at any given time and the paperwork to match.

And it was one of these identities she used to get Julian his first performance at a little no-name pub outside of London. 

Julian was sixteen then, not quite an adult, but he seemed to sink into the role as if he had always done it. The young woman who was not yet Sophie Deveraux watched with hidden astonishment as he charmed waitresses, chirped cheerfully at patrons, and acted like he had been performing in seedy little pubs all his life. Julian seemed utterly comfortable here, playing his guitar on the small stage and always knowing the right song to make the crowd happy.

The owner sidled up to her to ask, quietly, “Quite the performer, your little bird is. Any chance we might be able to arrange something more… permanent? He’s got even the regulars enthralled with that music of his.”

She put on what she privately thought of as her Business Smile and replied, just as quietly, “I’ll have to talk with him, and of course we would have to arrange a rate, but I’ll see if he’s interested at all.”

The man nodded, and wandered off in the direction of the bar, presumably to arrange payment for them.

Eventually, Julian bowed and stepped off the stage, grinning at the wave of applause that followed him. He practically bounced up to where she was sitting at the bar, cheeks flushed and hair askew with excitement as he laughed. “Raven, did you  _ see _ me? That was  _ fantastic _ , amazing, sheer perfection! I cannot even put it into words! The experience, the feeling of the audience when they  _ love _ your songs! I’m speechless! Lost for words! I don’t think I shall  _ ever _ be able to forget this!”

“Completely out of words, I see,” she teased gently. 

Julian opened his mouth, but before he could retort, a pair of glasses were set down in front of them. The bartender winked and said, “On the house. The lad here brought us more customers than we normally see in a week, ‘s only fair to repay that some.”

Julian laughed, high and bright. “Then we thank you, my good sir! I’m sure we will enjoy it!”

She hid her smile in her drink, watching Julian charm the bartender into several more glasses of alcohol until they were both tipsy.

“So… how did you  _ do _ that? I mean, you just walked in and you looked like you’d been doing this your entire life. Have you been sneaking out without me, cousin?” She smiled at him, genuinely curious - Julian was adaptable and good at fitting in when he made the effort, but this had been more than that, had been almost like watching a swan go from lumbering on the ground to graceful airborne swoops.

Julian laughed back. “Would you believe me if I said I truly didn’t know?” A cloud passed over his face, as a somber mood took hold of him. “There seem to be a good many things that I don’t know until I do them, to be honest.”

In an attempt to distract him, she said, “I’m glad you enjoyed it, at least. I wanted to see your first performance before I left, and I thought, what better present than to organize it for you? The owner wanted you to come back, by the way - I can help you set something up, if you want.”   
  
Julian’s sharp blue eyes met hers. “You’re leaving?”   
  
“Yes. I can’t - Julian, there’s so much I want to  _ do, _ ” she said, suddenly desperate for him to understand. “I want to travel, I want to see the world, I want to see what I can  _ do _ . And too many people know me here. It would only take one person recognizing me for it to get back to Father, and then I’ll be grounded until I’m old and grey. When I tell everyone else, I’ll say I’m going to an exclusive school in Europe. But I can’t - I can’t stay here all my life, Julian.”   
  
“I know.” Julian was looking down at the bar as he drew patterns in the condensation, before looking up at her again. He was serious now-no joking entertainer, but calm and centered, looking almost older than his years. “I do, Raven, truly. There’s simply not enough room for you to soar here. You need ballrooms, and state functions, and-and a place to be free. So yes, cousin mine, go. Spread your wings and soar as high as you can, and I sincerely hope you find what it is you’re looking for someday.”   
  
“And you, little cousin?” He started at her question, eyes widening. “What is it that you’re looking for? What do you want to find?”   
  
Julian laughed, a dry, tired noise. “You know, I’m really not sure!” He slumped forward over the bar, all the energy seeming to drain out of him suddenly. “I want to make my music, of course, and get out of my parent’s house, but beyond that...have you ever made an agreement to meet a friend somewhere, and then after a while, when you think back to it, you can’t quite remember when it was you decided to meet?”   
  
She nodded, perplexed but following. The frustration on his face grew as Julian spoke, becoming more animated as he went on. 

“It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. And not only can I not remember  _ when _ I was to meet them, I cannot remember  _ where _ ,  _ how,  _ or even  _ who _ I was supposed to meet!” He was gesturing emphatically as he turned to her, eyes alight with the frustration he felt. “And I know, I  _ know _ it was someone important. Something I  _ desperately  _ needed to remember, something  _ so important _ that even when I can’t remember it, that even when I can’t remember what it is, I know there's something  _ to _ remember. I know it was important, and it’s been so long, Raven, and  _ I can’t find it _ .” 

  
  


She reached over to take his hand, squeezing it comfortingly. The anger seemed to fall out of him then, leaving Julian looking drawn and tired. “Whatever it is I’m looking for, it doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.” He gave her a wry, tired smile, as he said, “I don’t intend to give up, of course, but neither am I holding my breath. So go, cousin, and soar free as the sun. I hope it brings you joy.”

On their way out, she caught a glance at Julian’s doodles. They looked almost like a stylized wolf head of some sort.

A month later, she was in France, and the thrill of stepping out into a room of rich businessmen and women for the first time, completely anonymous, cemented her choice forever.

She would not use her original name again.

Over the years, she picked up names and dropped them again, wearing them like jewelry and discarding them just as quickly. It was Julian who advised her to pick at least one name to go by. 

In a letter he sent to her in Spain, he wrote,  _ Take care not to lose yourself, Raven. Dance all you please, and charm who you like, but pick a person to be behind that. Or one day, you will wake up and realize that you can no longer tell the difference between the parts that are yourself, and the parts that make up the mask _ .

She wrote him back,  _ I always did like the name Sophie _ .

For his twenty first birthday, she sent him a lute that had caught her eye in a small market in Poland. He sent her back a recording of him, singing on the lute about a raven who sang so sweetly she charmed the stars from the sky to wear them in her feathers. 

Sophie sweet talked and conned her way through Europe, Asia, and America. Julian sang and played and gathered a small but devoted following. She knew, from his occasional mention, that he still hadn’t found the something he had told her about so many years ago, just as he knew her own frustration as she began to feel as if there was nothing  _ new _ for her to do. It would take Nate Ford reaching out to her, and finding the people that made up Leverage, for Sophie Deveraux to feel as if she was coming home.

Julian knew, of course, that she had found people she cared about, even if he didn’t know all of it. In one of her now less frequent letters, Sophie admitted to him that it was frightening in a way, to have people she wanted to come back to. His response was simply,  _ I’m glad you’ve found yourself a family, my dearest Raven. _

After she and Nate retired, and Parker took over Leverage with her boys, Sophie sent Julian a postcard with the inscription,  _ If you’re ever looking for some good food, I hear this place is rather well spoken of, in the right circles. _ . She knew he would understand what she was saying.

So when several months later, a knock came at the door to the brewpub as the team unwound after a stressful job, Sophie wasn’t completely surprised by the sight of her cousin standing there with a suitcase. 

“Hey, cousin mine. Miss me?”


End file.
